Anne Robert Jacques Turgot

"To suppose all consumers to be dupes, and all merchants and manufacturers to be cheats, has the effect of authorizing them to be so, and of degrading all the working members of the community."

Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, Baron de l'Aulne (10 May 1727–18 March 1781), often referred to as Turgot, was a French economist and statesman. Today he is best remembered as an early advocate for economic liberalism.

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Influence Outside of Economics

In 1912, Theodore Roosevelt suggested France could have avoided the French "Reign of Terror," and would have been much better off had they listened to Turgot:

"...Our aim must be steady, wise progress. It would be well if our people would study the history of a sister republic. All the woes of France for a century and a quarter have been due to the folly of her people in splitting into the two camps of unreasonable conservatism and unreasonable radicalism. Had pre—Revolutionary France listened to men like Turgot, and backed them up, all would have gone well. But the beneficiaries of privilege, the Bourbon reactionaries, the short—sighted ultra—conservatives, turned down Turgot; and then found that instead of him they had obtained Robespierre..."[1]